CrackBerry Poll: BlackBerry Outage or BlackBerry Outrage? How ticked off are you over this disruption in BlackBerry services?

It's been a crazy few days in the BlackBerry World. For those in the EMEIA region who have been dealing with BlackBerry service issues since Monday, you're all my heroes for getting through it in one piece. Seriously, it's pretty crazy how hard it is to cope with no email / BBM / web browser etc. on your mobile device once it's part of your life - it shows just how much society has become dependent on technology. Just today has felt a bit like torture to me... at three days I'd be going CrackBerry Crazy for sure.

With the BlackBerry service interuption spreading to North America for the past twenty four hours, my day got extremely crazy as I fielded tons of questions from mainstream media. One of the big questions that came up often was how mad/not are BlackBerry users at Research In Motion over the outage? My general thought was that while nobody likes their phone/service to be at less than 100%, there's probably a pretty even split between those who are REALLY TICKED off and those who get that things can happen, and that while it sucks, life will go back to normal soon enough. In other words, outages can happen, no big deaL, still going to be using a BlackBerry tomorrow.

So that's the question here... how ticked off are you? Is an outage like this something that makes you mad enough to want to spit nickels and switch to a different platform? Or does a little separation make the heart grow fonder for BlackBerry?

Reader comments

CrackBerry Poll: BlackBerry Outage or BlackBerry Outrage? How ticked off are you over this disruption in BlackBerry services?

I say BlackBerry for life, but I'm seriously disappointed by this outage.
Hope this doesn't happen another time soon.

Having a phone that costed me 650€ (9900) and paying 15€ per month only for the Internet (plus phone calls etc), and being able to use it only for the same functions as a Nokia 3310 of 10 years ago (phone calls and SMS) was a really bad experience.

Really hope this was an accident. I feel fine with my BB, and I do not want to change it for another phone... Unless I'm forced to.

anyone that "threatens" to go to apple or an android platform is an f*'n joke.

go i say. it'll lessen the network traffic for the rest of us!

how many times has the lights gone out because of a hydro issue? did u say, "that's it, i'm going solar or wind power from now on?"

remember when the earthquake struck in Virginia? cell phones, iphones, androids.....all useless in that region. whats the only platform that worked in emergent situations? blackberry. and boy, did bbm come in handy at that time when u wanted to know if friends, families were ok.

I find it hard to believe people are amazed because somewhere in the RIM network failed and dear me BBM did not work. Your phone was still working, call the people you need to contact remember the prime function of the hand held you own. You live in a country that when it rains hard the satelite TV systems stop working. Stop RIM bashing they have a better record than most other companies. Iphones need a rubber band to work, playstation network is always being hacked. So grow up, shut up and support RIM

...If it hadn't have been for all the coverage that this has gotten, I might be more upset. My emails and services haven't even been 'out'. Worst that I have dealt with is a sluggish internet the last couple of days. An example is I finished writing this before the page finished loading.

Let's face it tho, s*** happens to everyone. Everyone on any phone / service will have to deal with this occasionally.

I'm actually somewhere between the second and third options (although I voted on the second). This week I'm in the office, so I'm in front of the computer most of the day, and in the evening, I've been using my iPad. Given that I wasn't out on the road this week, it hasn't made a difference (it's actually been kind of relaxing). Even if I were on the road, I could've just tethered my iPad to my Blackberry and do what needed to be done.

However, it calls into question whether I should stay with Blackberry, as devices like the iPhone don't rely upon centralized servers in order to get my email. I was originally looking at QNX/BBX phones as my next device, but now I might be considering some Android QWERTY devices as well.

Great Marketing strategy RIM. Publicity Stunt!! Right before DevCon. Kind of like Janet Jackson's wardrobe failure. Apple didnt take all the buzz with ios 5 and iphone 4s. RIM got there shine on. When was the last time you saw BB's on CNN? Remember Any press is good press. I think this outage has overshadowed Apple's launch's of the week. Let's go #teamblackberry

RIM runs a huge,complex international data network. I challenge anyone to name a company who could run it better. These things happen. I've had more issues with my home internet/cable company than I've ever had with my BB. Let's keep this in perspective.

They had a system failure and are working diligently to fix it. Stuff happens....people must learn to deal with it.

When a light bulb burns out in your house do you change the light fixture or move?
Do you move homes when your power company has an outage and you are with electricity for a few hours?
When your car won't start do you go out and buy a new, different one?

All this talk of people moving to apple because of the service outage need a head check.

Stuff happens....life happens..... chill and enjoy life without that constant buzzing of which 95% of incoming stuff is just pointless garbage anyways.

It surprises me to no end that those that complained loud and hard about bbm didn't know that sms messaging was working fine. I guess the info they were trying to communicate wasn't that important was it?

Since switching to Blackberry I've been exceptionally pleased with my service (I've had Iphone and Android).
If we expect perfection, we'll all be sorely disappointed. Name one electronic device beyond an amplifier that hasn't malfunctioned at least once.
RIM is the only remaining North American Manufacturer of Communication Devices left (Canada and Mexico). They have provided us with a remarkable, secure, if not flashy communication tool. They've been the "Gold Standard" unless you "need" to play Angry Birds.
We all complain about jobs being shifted to the Eastern Hemisphere, yet with this outage are ready to jump ship.
Think of the economic implications!

This kind of thing happens when dealing with technology, people just need to stop being babies about it. Mine was only out for like four hours, I didn't know about the outage at first and then I found out. Sucked when I wanted to show someone a video on Youtube but I wasn't pissed off about it.

All this reveals how consistent BlackBerry really is when it comes to reliability. I just watched Mr. Lazaridis' communication. It was well done and I feel honest. He apologized and didn't promise the moon. I am confident that this failure has sharpened the learning curve and almost certainly reduces the likelihood of this kind of failure again.

Stuff like this does happen. Even Apple lovers have been struggling with issues related to updating their iProducts to the new OS due to server issues.

I was down for about 24 hrs. Web browser worked fine for most of the day. Had opera installed and installed logicmail to check my email. If I was down for 3 days like some people I'd be pissed and probably looking for a new phone especially since for the first 2 days Rim didn't say much about the outage. Once it hit NA they finally started talking more about it. So hopefully they learn a lesson and next time it happens they'll keep everyone informed. A single post on facebook and twitter isn't good enough.

Shit does happen & yes can understand why those who rely on their BBs for their business are pissed.

I just found RIM's updates meaningless and frustrating, we could see there was an issue, don't need a statement stating the obvious a few hours later! As for their so called testing team well hope they are in disguise!

Doesn't really matter. My iPhone will be here tomorrow and then I won't have to deal with this mess anymore. This pushed one of the VPs over the edge too and he'll be switching now as well. Really poor timing for RIM.

Heads need to roll over this. The outage did nit particularly affect me. My phone still worked and so did SMS BUT I used to run a banking data-center and if that went off line for a minute, my job was on the line. I left the job without getting fired after 3 years.

It is significant that this started in the UK where, in my experience, there is more interest in getting procedures right than actually making things work properly.

I like the phones a lot... but the service, apps, syncing, it's just not up to par for the industry today. iPhone and Android are improving and RIM just isn't keeping up... sorry to say, but I'm leaving soon.

I must be a really unusual Blackberry phone owner because I use a carrier that doesn't officially support Blackberries with their servers, etc... I already owned my 9700 when I moved to Sweden and I decided to go with pay-as-you-go service.

I installed LogicMail and Opera Mini and live totally independent of RIM's network of servers. Only problem with this setup is that I can't read my emails from my playbook over bridge, but hopefully OS 2.0 will bring native email to my PB next week!

I know it's not a big deal and that this kind of things are bound to happen at one point or another. The thing is that this is happening at a point where a lot of people (myself included) are starting to wonder what life is like on the other side of the fence (e.g.: iPhone, Android).
I've never owned either an iPhone or an Android and have been a crack berry abuser for over 4 years now. I love my Blackberry, but at this point in time I am feeling a little dissapointed with it. I want to try other platforms and see how those fit me, just to see if they can meet my needs at all. This outage is just another drop on an already overflowing glass of discontent with Blackberry right now.
I know there's no perfect smartphone, but I think that, at least for me, is time to swim in a different direction, at least for a while.
Who knows, maybe I'll come back to Blackberry loving it even more than I do now! (And I do love my blackberry, but love is not enough to keep a relationship going... huh, got a little deep there didn't I)

im not even affected by it so I lean to the fact that it's not something that will push me over to another brand of phone but seriously the wrong time for this time. More so than any other time especially with the new iphone coming out soon.

Still this better not happen again in the short term or people will just think RIM are unreliable.

Okay so not good not having emails and bbm etc. But it happens! No point getting all uppety about it! What's that going to achieve??
Take a couple of days and have a tech detox!
All emails can be accessed via webmail so is not as if you've not been able to read them from a PC/laptop!
Things like these have to be expected when the poverty models are being sold with Such good deals for younguns and Boosting figures So much!

It's between Option two and three. I Go Right now At this Moment with Option three.

Monday was 1
Tuesday was 2

But Wednesday angered me really Bad. As i even coudn't use The Browser The 9900 was really nothing mor As an brick/Or a 99 Nokia phone!
Three days in a row is really extreme.

But whats me even more bothered is The communication Style of rim! OK perhabs For me im Europe it looks like they ignored 2,5 days of this Big Mess and only started To react when The issues reacht Canada/US.

WHO woudn'. Be upset with this?

At The Moment it looks like everythinh is Bach To normal on Thursday At 7 am

This is just a theory. There have been growing protests and riots in financial districts around the world. It has not been a primary focus of the media, but we all know about it. Who uses Blackberry, the government and big business do. How do you quieten the masses, you cut off communication. Just a theory.

I am constantly trying to bring co-workers and friends over to Blackberry especially now with the new phones out and recent improvements "qnx" on the horizon, RIM=Not Helping much with these outages when email/messaging are some of your top selling points

I'm more panicy than outraged... I KNOW there's emails waiting.. I NEED my BIS... I feel like I lost an arm or something... The real real bad thing, is all my school related emails come to my @mobility.BlackBerry.net email address :| which means I can't even do my corrispondence education properly until this is fixed....

It's easy for some users to "chill" when it comes to outages such as this. The issue: MANY Blackberry users have chosen a blackberry over other devices (iphone in particular) because of the business benefits blackberry holds. When you put a blackberry and an iphone side by side there is NO comparison. Blackberry wins in this area hands down. However, people don't act in a logical way when they're angry, they act emotionally. Because of this I can see many making the switch especially with the arrival of the iphone4s. MY issue: I use my blackberry for business, and do most of my emaiils throughout the day away from my desk. Today, I "sent" 11 emails to one of my top clients, when on my blackberry it still had the clock as if it hadn't sent. I was also not receiving emails for up to two hours, and possibly not at all! This is NOT Ok.
So yes, for many you can all chill out, and if my business wasn't being affected by these outages I would chill too...but I cannot rely on this brand any longer, and I know many of my colleagues agree.

My company's IT just sent out an email explaining the situation, and urging everyone not to rely on their blackberries. They said they will plan a platform change for the whole company due to RIM's "deteriorating service reliability and product quality".

The IT manager is a big apple fan. All he needed was an excuse to throw away all of our blackberries and buy new iphones for the business and his own pleasure. Now I bet he got the best excuse ever to do so.

bbpandy, that's why most of these CIO's of large corporations are idiots. I agree with you. To make a drastic change in a day or two is f'ing ridiculous! What the hell is wrong with these people?? Did they forget how to make a PHONE CALL or send a TEXT message!!?? It's not the end of the world! RIM will get things working better than ever!

I'm being made fun of by iPhone users. I'm not surprised. Show's their level of intelligence. Plus, at least us BlackBerry users can make phone calls. :P

Verizon is my carrier and I got 8 emails at 6:23 pm eastern and i have not received anymore nor can i send emails. My BBM sending ability is still down but i can receive BBMs from my contacts....makes no sense to me, especially when the RIM saw North America is up and running.....not so much a true statement. Do i need to reset my phone or something i am missing??

Hmmm i was wondering why i got a bunch of emails at once and a few sent would not go through. And i blamed it on my phone :-), glad i read this now i can stop shopping for another. Phone had been acting strange all week.

Now imagine going for 36 hours straight having your business "closed" or depending of a WiFi connection around town to update your laptop.

Stopping in any other Starbucks to update your email on my laptop. Im sorry RIM but i need reliability in a partner, that i can trust to have my business running.

I'm loyal to RIM, but when a "partner" starts making you lose money.
Its time to see other options.

I feel bad for BlackBerry, since this issue came in the worst moment for the company. Having a fellow Fruit brand releasing a new model and a messaging service. (I know their phones are way overrated). But still its an option.

And holiday season just around the corner.

Im sorry RIM but today i was disappointed on you.
I went apeshit all day.

Listen "other guy" - I'm actually advocating the opposite of a fanboy: the fact that life can sort of go on without this huge dependancy. You find this small minded? It's getting National News because, although I'm not excusing them, RIM still matters. Go troll somewhere else!

You have just signed on here - you haven't made a single contribution to the forums - only to spew on here and get insulting. I'm a zombie with no life? Haha! You have no idea who I am - you'd be very surprised! I have a life, and so, I'm done with you.

So what.. BBM isn't working. Try using SMS as that's ALL u'd have on an iPhone or Android.

What's sooooo important u can't send it via SMS or just call the person ?

Do we really need to see the bbm profile pis u update every hour ? Or new status update telling everyone u r having a pissy day ? Really ? Not having BBM for cpl days is kinda nice. And SMS is just as easy to use anyways.

OMG this sucks....its only getting worse. It will has me thinking about switching to Apple or Android. I left T Mobile when they had constant outage....you pay too much to have to suffer in such a way.

You know they say there is no such thing as bad press. RIM was on every major news page today. That would cost millions in advertising to do. Yet this issue will cost millions anyway. You win some and lose some. Like others said SMS and the the phone works just like other smart phones.

Also does everyone forget when the earthquake hit this year in the US and Canada that SMS and phone service was overloaded on the ISP's and failing yet the blackberry service was working just fine. People could use that to communicate to loved ones. There is pros and cons to everything.

If RIM focused on only "one" phone at a time with no keyboard imagine how much easier it would be for testers and developers. They have crap loads of new and old models to deal with. Tough job to keep it all running smooth. I like options. Its amazing how personal these smart phones get to people.

If this fiasco drags this weekend, Oct 15th/16th, really RIM/BlackBerry should just reboot all its email servers, probably the fastest way to get rid of this technical problem (dual failures of main switch and backup switch, causing database corruption)??

There may be liability problems with lost emails, but heck, emails are simply not getting to intended recipients anyways!

And someone at RIM management really should be fired over this huge fiasco...
Are RIM/BlackBerry cutting back on maintenance of its email servers, and it's starting to show?

Just when you think RIM cannot make it anymore difficult for itself, RIM shoots itself in the foot again by having this huge email fiasco just when its competitors are rolling out new phones for this upcoming Christmas season!

I'm in the middle, it sucks but life goes on. Honestly though, it's kinda silly that my browser is down as well when I should just be getting my data from carrier who is just fine, they're not down at all.

I would have switched from Blackberry a long time ago but unfortunately, there are only Blackberry devices and crappy ass Android devices on my carrier..... Welcome to Wind Mobile Canada.

In North America this is the 2nd major outage in just 2 or 3 years. And even with the outage you can still call or txt people. I read a major publication that interviewed a guy who was supposed to be a fortune 500 CIO. & he said he was so upset about the outage he was changing his employees over to iphone.....WHAT THE $$%*). What kinda CIO makes those kinds of major decisions in a day or two? ALSO, what is currently not working that the iphone could do? (We can still txt & check email via webmail) Also, in the last year how many issues has apple had? Remember their numerous alarm clock issues?

All this coverage reminds me of the coverage when gmail went down a while back. 99.9% reliability still means eventually that .1% will get you

im Indonesian and staying in kathmandu Nepal and BBM is become the only thing that can makes me connect with all my friends in Indonesia. being not be able to connect with my world for about 2 days, really makes me frustrated, but still i love my blackberry so much.
I love Blackberry forever, hope this will not happen again :)

The simple fact here is that people still care about RIM. The outage is on every major news page on the front page, in some way form or fashion. That speaks volumes. It says that the world still cares when BlackBerry is down. The competition still cares enough to come out and take jabs at it. Look at it this way; if you love something too much or hate it too much, all it means is that you care about it, or you would just be indifferent and you would not hear about it.

The fact that this outage has become such a big deal shows RIM's foot print, its ability to bring effortless, real time and secure communication solutions to a dead halt. We take RIM for granted when our LED's blink red all the time, but no one actually understands that RIM still is a threat to its competition and thats why the competition circles around this type of news like vultures; because they see it as a threat and want it to fail.

Fight back RIM, get the fuck back up and Fight. You invented the smartphone. You made the world go truly mobile, the rest followed in your trend setting path and now call themselves "innovative" at your expense. Email on mobile devices exist because of you and no one else. Get back up and fight!

Thank You! Enough of what I wanted to say. Was only yesterday we were affected here in the Caribbean! Now things are back! I'm not pissed really. If we as humans who are supposed to sensible fail so much so often then what say technology! Others may very well have their day, who knows? No lives were lossed! How many of us get pissed when the news is flooded with murders and other atrocities against REAL people?! And the competition shouldn't rejoice, your day may come too! I hope RIM clear up things soon and put more solid contingencies in place. For days the world stopped and took note! Very funny cause BlackBerry is supposed to be a "has been"! Continue the good work RIM.

This was graciously provided to us from CrackBerry. This has nothing to do with RIM, or RIM fixing its problem. How is it shameless? I'm sure you expect Kevin himself to fly to the UK and fix the core failure in the server?

If it's in kevin's power to do so then yes, he should go fix it himself. It wasn't so long ago that Phil was expected to pull an app from android market. I think it's time we expect superpowers from our leaders. :-D

Eh, it hasn't really affected me here in Miami, Florida to be honest, but I can still feel the effects, since as of now I still cannot communicate with any BBM contacts in Panama (Central America) nor in Europe.

I would admittedly be annoyed at not having any Blackberry services but maybe a break is in order once in a while.

It better be Mike L., I don`t even want to hear from that big liar Jim Balsillie!

Hey if they deliver Playbook 2.0 in a timely matter and it`s all that it was hyped up to be then I will be content. Maybe a release date for the new phones as well you know something to get e excited again.

Yes, nobody has died but I expect my smartphone to receive emails. The only reason I haven't abandoned my 9900 for an iPhone or Android is because of how much I rely on emails.
If something like this had happened to Google or Apple, I can't say that this community's reaction would be "oh... that's okay! It happens".

Between RIM's "minor whoopsie" and my carrier taking their time getting HSPA+ rolled out, chances are very good that I'll be switching things up in the next few months....both carrier and OS. No, I don't rely on BB. I'm just Joe Consumer who could really get away with a dumbphone, but has gotten rather attached to the convinence of a smartphone. Just saying a guy can only wait so long for "something better to come along" before you get tired of waiting.

Again, I'm not one who relies on BBM or instant email for my day to day life. I understand there are a lot of people who do. Its just the combination of the 2 that has put the last nail in this coffin. (Unless by some chance RIM completely blows my mind before the end of my contract... but I'll still be looking at options)

I voted "outrage" on the poll. Partly because of RIM's explaination (confused me and I'm slightly more tech savy then the average consumer) and partly due to my carrier (which has nothing at all do do with RIM's system crash)

People need to stop complaining...yeah it sucks but when people say "I'm switching to iPhone" is kind of pathetic. I mean yes BBM is down but can you not still text people? (Like the iPhone does)...can you not call people and get away from this messaging all the time? People have come so attached to their phones its ridiculous. I would love to be using my 9900 right now but if there's a problem, it isn't the end of the world, especially in the Americas which have been experiencing this problem for ONLY 1 day. It's times like these when I kind of miss the old times when smartphones weren't seen as lifesupport and people weren't so attached to them.

I selected the "these things happen" option, because they do, and it is blackberry 4 life as it was put, but a part of that is that these outages really don't happen that often.. So the sentiment of "this better not happen again anytime soon from the second option rings true as well.

I work in a large commercial network where redundancy is built in and has been tested. We have seen our fair share of outages lasting similar timeframes. Trust, if this happens again it wont be down for this long. Lessons have been learnt and process improvements are in place.

Maybe we need to stop being so bitchy about small things cause the world still turned while BIS was down and really, we could still call and text.

I laughed earlier when a friend decided to post on my facebook page that his iphone was working great with a wink.. I thought about it for a second and then replied if that's how we measure working great then I guess my blackberry is working great today too! After all even during an outage it can do everything your iphone can do.. I can call, I can txt, an I could check my email on the web browser.. The services we are missing are PIN based services that the iphone didn't have to begin with!

its not the disruption in the services thats really wound people up, its the lack of comprhesible statements from rim.

for example they said `The messaging and browsing delays that some of you are still experiencing were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure. Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested` and they also kept saying EMEA.

newsflash, normal, average customers dont know what a `core switch` is, also `failover` isnt even a british word, so putting that on a british tweet is more confusing, then saying EMEA jus confuses the issue even more. im not saying treat customers like idiots and explain it like they are ten year olds, but some decent non marketing/techie speak that the average consumer/user can relate to is important.

apple turned `signal attenuation` into `death grip` for people to understand. if you confuse ur customers with technobabble (sorry but who actually knows what a core switch is?) you only alienate and infuriate them further.

so to get this straight, you are pissed at RIM for not dumbing it down enough for you to understand? Wow...your comments just goes to show that you can't win with some people..... don't communicate, they get yell at. Communicate but dont dumb it down enough - get yelled at. Communicated but dumb it down too much so people think the issue is minor - get yelled at.

Service being down does suck for sure, i've had messages flicker through today, my boss was pretty ticked off I hadn't replied yet to a bbm and I had to fill him in on the entire situation lol (being the resident CrackBerry expert has it's advantages)

Any word on progress? I read the letter and it said that email and bbm is back up just backlogged, when do they expect to clear the back log? another day? I've just switched everyone over to text messages, feels weird as I've rarely used text's anymore due to the fact 95% at work are all on BlackBerry

That being said, Kevin, can RIM really blow our minds with a QNX phone that will measure up to the stuff the other guys are putting out? I just hope they can take the best of the PlayBook and the best of OS7 and combine them with some amazing hardware. That might be the ticket. I don't think the same OS from the PB on a smaller device will cut it. There needs to be a menu system and the menu system on the recent phones is, in my opinion, very cool to work with.

It made me realize how much I love BlackBerry and what it does for me. I have my Android and iPhone4 as backup during this outage. The lack of notifications on both devices is one of the reasons why I love BlackBerry. The fact that BOTH devices can't even do what a BlackBerry can do, says a lot. And I have both phones running. It's all about the led notification light.....and more of course. :)

Shit happens and we just need to have patience. Just be glad it wasn't a global internet outage that affects carriers AND internet service providers. NOW THAT would be a real thing to bitch about! ;)

Wait for the flood of e-mails, ahem, tsunami, to arrive. it'll be fun to feel mine vibrate it's way out of the holster. I cannot wait until then. THAT is the message telling you... WE'RE BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm guessing that (with the timing of this post) most of these early 'no big deal' replies were from North American users who suffered almost no outage. I wonder what the views of these people would be if they'd had a three day outage... On a similar note, would be interesting to see the poll results broken down by area (EMEA and elsewhere) if possible.

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